Statements: Iran protests

Flogging and Prison Sentence for 15 Hepco Hardworking Workers

Calling on the International Labor Organization (ILO) and labor unions to condemn the mullahs' anti-worker regime

The clerical regime’s judiciary in the city of Arak, in a five-year suspended sentence, in order to intimidate protesting and striking workers, condemned 15 Hepco workers to 74 lashes and one to two years in prison for their protest rally in June of last year.

The charges against the Hepco workers who were protesting non-payment of their salary and benefits, and failure to implement the deceptive promises of the regime, were mentioned as disrupting public order and propaganda against the regime.

The Iranian resistance salutes the brave workers of Hepco and calls on the general public, especially the workers and youth of Arak, to support and express solidarity with them and strongly condemns these anti-human and anti-labor punishments. The mullahs' judiciary therefore wants to tell workers who have no guilt other than demanding their wages and salaries, to accept working without pay and if they don’t abide in the next five years, they will be subject to such punishments.

The Iranian resistance urges the International Labor Organization, the international labor unions and international human rights organizations to support the rights of Iranian workers and to take urgent action to prevent the increasing crimes of the Iranian regime against Iranian workers and to abolish slavery era punishments.

The clerical regime responds to the protest of protesting workers with flogging and imprisonment while more than 90% of workers live below the poverty line, and their livelihood is getting worse every day. The representative of workers at the Supreme Council of Labor says: “83% of workers live below the death line ... rising housing prices and rent, rising dollar prices, coins, gold, poultry, bananas, meat, rice, oil, and ... .. is indicative of the fact that the households' table, especially the laborer, declines every day in 2018, and in the second half of the current year people's tears are shed to pay for their expenses (IRGC News Agency-Tasnim- June 15, 2018).

With over 43 years of history, the Hepco Company, the largest manufacturer of road construction machinery in the Middle East, has been in the midst of being destroyed for years due to the treacherous policies of the regime in the transfer of main industries and factories to the regime’s authorities and confidants, and uncontrolled imports. The production of the company, which has a capacity of 3000 units, has dropped to 100 units, and its employment capacity of 3,000 workers has been reduced to 900, who are themselves in a disastrous condition for non-payment of their salaries and benefits for months.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of IranOctober 28, 2018